Sisterly Kindness

When I was a child in the 1960s, I lived with my mother and older sister, Rachel, in Amarillo, Texas. The chief health rule in our house was that you had to have a fever of at least 103 degrees to be taken to the doctor. Anything less and you were on your own.

My mother wasn’t ignorant of disease processes or neglectful, she was just broke. She and my abusive dad split (amid great rejoicing in the land) when I was 7. Mother and Rachel and I stayed in the house—I’m not sure what their financial arrangement was, but I’m pretty sure my mother had to make the entire mortgage payment. I learned later that my father, who taught junior high school English and so wasn’t raking in the dough, either, told her that if she “went after” him financially in the divorce settlement, he would seek custody of us. Mother definitely did not go after him in the divorce. She would have done anything to save us from the permanent terror of living with him until we were 18, although there was nothing she could do to save us from the intermittent terror of having to visit him every month. He paid $100 per month in child support (only $50 in June, when we had to stay with him for two weeks, although that was his accounting, not the court’s). She paid all the other costs of our lives, which, of necessity, had to be as low as possible.

She got a full-time job the week after he left. This was 1962, when working mothers (even those supporting their children) were considered to be neglecting their children and to be less valuable and less motivated workers than men who were supporting their wives and children. Yes, this logic boggles the mind. Mother had experience working in her father’s shoe store, as a bank teller, and as a substitute teacher in Lazbudy, Texas, where 1950s qualifications didn’t include a teaching certificate. When she applied for a clerical position at Southwestern Public Service Company (the natural gas company) in Amarillo, she told them she could type 100 words per minute. Fortunately for us, they took her at her word, but she had to ask a co-worker how to turn on the electric typewriter when she got to work on her first day. The minimum wage was $1.00 per hour, so she probably made about $40.00 per week and was grateful for it, and more grateful when she moved up to work at the Pantex Federal Credit Union (out where they made nuclear bombs, although she never talked about that), maybe for $3.00 or $4.00 per hour. No benefits, though, so visits to the doctor were curtailed, rationed out to those whose ailments involved obvious febrile danger.

I broke my arm when I slipped and caught myself, palm spread, while climbing up a hill on Independence Day, 1966. I fainted and my best friend’s father carried me to their family car. After three days of complaining that my arm hurt, even though it wasn’t swollen (turns out I don’t swell much), Mother finally took me to the emergency room to get an x-ray, scolding all the way that it was impossible that there was anything so wrong that it could be classed as an emergency. When the doctor reported that my arm was broken in two places, I felt vindicated. Never was there a child more inclined to say, “I told you so,” and I did. The doctor was bemused; my mother didn’t say much—she was probably worrying about what the emergency room visit, cast, and follow-up care were going to cost.

The whole 103-degree fever requirement meant that, if we were too sick to go to school but not sick enough to send the mercury in the thermometer up that high, we were left at home on the couch with the TV (no remote), a sleeve of saltines, some ginger ale or Orange Crush, and if necessary, a box of Kleenex. One Christmas Eve, I was sick; sick-in-bed sick, not watching-TV-while-lying-on-the-couch sick. I had a fever, but it didn’t hit the 103-degree mark. We always went to my grandparents’ house in Plainview, about 90 minutes from Amarillo, for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Rachel was mad at me for spoiling Christmas; Mother was at work for a half-day. At about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, I woke up all sweaty. I reported my symptoms to my mother when she got home. “Her fever broke!” she exclaimed and started packing the car. They laid me out on the back seat, and later on my grandparents’ living room couch by the Christmas tree, and most of us had a grand time.

I write this not to criticize my mother for the delicate financial balancing game she was forced to play. Instead, I want to share how, even in the 1960s, the cultural image of the kindly family doctor who accepted payment in eggs or occasional coins was a load of bunk, and a family that looked like it should be managing financially was not. My mother had a full-time job; we were a white family in a middle-class neighborhood. And we had to ration medical care—only emergencies need apply; otherwise, you got crackers and ginger ale and good luck to you. The idea that my mother could risk her job by staying home from work to take care of a sick child was as ludicrous as the idea that she would take us to the doctor if we were not obviously at death’s door.

Things have not improved that much for a lot of people. Today, children might be covered by Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). In our messed-up system of tying health insurance coverage to employment, employers with more than 50 employees are required to offer health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), so if it had been available, we would have been covered for doctor appointments and broken arms. Or maybe, in these more enlightened times, the court would order my dad to keep us on his health insurance. But child support is often not enough or not being paid.

When Congress sent the Child Tax Credit as it had been during the COVID-19 pandemic back to the way it was before (that is, less, and less often), I almost wept for the parents who had tasted what it was like to have their families escape poverty for some months, only to have that blessing pulled out from under them. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” has resulted in millions of people losing Medicaid and SNAP (food stamp) benefits. Parents are still having to juggle their children’s medical needs against paying for food and rent and shoes for growing feet.

Turns out my “normal” temperature when I am healthy is not 98.6 degrees, but about 97 degrees. So if I have a 103-degree fever, that’s more like a 104.6-degree fever in the average person, getting up there into really-worry-about-it territory. I don’t know if that was true when I was a child, I just know that the 103-degree rule wasn’t a good one. But what’s a mother to do? Even in 2026.